Well has the eloquent author of The Reforms and Reformers of Great Britain said of him, "Not corn-law repealers alone, but all Britons who moisten their scanty bread with the sweat of the brow, are largely indebted to his inspiring lay, for the mighty bound which the laboring mind of England has taken in our day." Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play No trick of priestcraft here! Back, puny lordling! darest thou lay A hand on Elliott's bier?
Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, Beneath his feet he trod.
He knew the locust swarm that cursed The harvest-fields of God.
On these pale lips, the smothered thought Which England's millions feel, A fierce and fearful splendor caught, As from his forge the steel.
Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire His smitten anvil flung; God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire, He gave them all a tongue! Then let the poor man's horny hands Bear up the mighty dead, And labor's swart and stalwart bands Behind as mourners tread.
Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds, Leave rank its minster floor; Give England's green and daisied grounds The poet of the poor! Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge That brave old heart of oak, With fitting dirge from sounding forge, And pall of furnace smoke! Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds, And axe and sledge are swung, And, timing to their stormy sounds, His stormy lays are sung.
There let the peasant's step be heard, The grinder chant his rhyme, Nor patron's praise nor dainty word Befits the man or time.
No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh For him whose words were bread; The Runic rhyme and spell whereby The foodless poor were fed! Pile up the tombs of rank and pride, O England, as thou wilt! With pomp to nameless worth denied, Emblazon titled guilt! No part or lot in these we claim; But, o'er the sounding wave, A common right to Elliott's name, A freehold in his grave! 1850 ICHABOD This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise," and the Fugitive Slave Law.

No partisan or personal enmity dictated it.

On the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest.

I saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness its sure results,--the Slave Power arrogant and defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme for the extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of the Union, the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken down, and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers.
In the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful rebuke.

But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment.